Advanced Word Repair Editor's Review

Advanced Word Repair should be used to recover data from your corrupt or damaged Word files. Microsoft Word's document format (DOC) is a proprietary and protected format, but widely used and supported. The format exists in several versions, with known interoperability problems. Advanced Word Repair claims to be able to repair Microsoft Word version 6, 95, 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 files. Its features include batch repairing, and a file finder which searches your computer for DOC files.

A few years ago my hard disk was partitioned using the FAT32 filesystem which is subject to data loss (a good reason to switch to NTFS). One day there was a power outage so my computer suddenly stopped. When I restarted it I found that some of my personal documents couldn't be opened anymore. Well, since then, I couldn't find any software to restore them, and as I thought Advanced Word Repair didn't help me either. I didn't know if this was just an isolated incident so I started testing the program more thoroughly.

I created a blank Word document, using Microsoft Word 2000, and I entered some text into it. First, I tried to modify (using a hexadecimal editor) its beginning. Although I didn't modify the important data (the text contained by the file), Advanced Word Repair showed me an error message: "Fail to repair C:\document.doc". I also tried modifying only the end of the file and the same message appeared. Then I tried to modify, still using a hex-editor, the part of the file which contained the text I entered. This time the document could still be opened by Microsoft Word, but some parts of it were replaced with weird looking characters. The program didn't modify the document, so it still contained the weird looking characters.

Next I tried creating a document using Microsoft Office 2003. When I modified the beginning the program the program didn't repair my document. When I modified the end of the file, however, I was able to recover a big part of my document. It's sad that data loss doesn't ask you whether you want to keep the beginning or the end of a file.

Pluses: Batch repairing is possible.

Drawbacks / flaws: Some files could be repaired and others couldn't.

In conclusion: If you have a corrupted Microsoft Word document you could try Advanced Word Repair. You might be lucky.

version reviewed: 1.2.0